from the because-that-beats-the-movie-experience? dept

Over the last week or so, there have been a bunch of news stories about the (now gone, as we'll explain in a moment) twitter account, 555uhz, which had been tweeting every half an hour what appeared to be a captioned frame-by-frame image from the classic 1980s movie, Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise. It was slightly weird and quirky, like plenty of random Twitter accounts. This one had picked up a little over 6,000 followers, but late last week Paramount began sending DMCA notices to the account, leading to Twitter shutting down the account entirely, likely for getting so many infringement claims.

We are writing to you on behalf of our client, Paramount Pictures Corporation (“Paramount”). Paramount is the owner of copyright and other intellectual property rights in and to the “Top Gun” motion picture (hereinafter referred to as "Top Gun"). No one is authorized to copy, reproduce, distribute, or otherwise use Top Gun without the express written permission of Paramount.

Notwithstanding this, it has come to our attention that a user of your website, @555uhz, is distributing the Top Gun film, frame by frame, via your website. The following URLs are some examples from the user’s Twitter account, with additional frames being uploaded continuously:

But, really, this seems like a massive overreaction by Paramount -- doing its typical "if we didn't approve it, it must be taken down" approach to copyright. In what world is seeing this going to somehow harm Paramount?

Is it really likely that someone will follow along with the one tweet every half an hour and decide they no longer need to see the actual movie? While it's anecdotal, in the last week when there was so much buzz about the account, I saw multiple people mention that because of the tweets, they wanted to go out and rewatch the movie (with at least one person admitting to never having seen it before). So, if anything, it seemed to generate more attention for the movie. And, just like typical shortsighted copyright maximalists, even things that act as good promotion must be killed "because... piracy."

Way to go Paramount lawyers. You've once again used copyright maximalism to hold back your own marketing.

Separately, it seems that a fairly strong argument can be made that this is fair use. It seems to be pretty clearly transformative. It's hard to see how it harms Paramount. It's not commercial. True, assuming that the full thing was tweeted, the "amount" of the work weighs against fair use, as does "the nature of the copyrighted work" (a movie), but on balance there's a reasonable argument that this particular setup would be considered fair use.

As a random aside, there's been some random speculation as to why the account was named @555uhz, but the folks over at Vice have a pretty clear explanation, discussing the framerate being shown. After first noting that a typical movie is 24 frames per second (fps), Vice calculates the actual framerate of the tweets:

But, the real framerate of @555uhz isn’t 24 frames per second, nor is the Twitter account sampling 24 frames per second. The real framerate is the rate at which the account posts frames to Twitter, just like the real framerate in a movie is the rate at which a spool of film projects images onto a screen. We can figure the Top Gun tweet-rate out easily enough: 48 tweets a day, two tweets an hour. That winds up being 2/60 or .034 frames per minute. Now, convert that to frames per second: .000555. Look familiar?

Frames per second is a more specific version of the unit Hertz (Hz), and 1 Hz is just one full cycle of some periodic thing (like sound waves, for example) happening in one second. So we actually have .000555 Hz, which converts nicely to 555 microHertz (uHz).

from the more-smoke-and-mirrors dept

For decades now, we keep hearing various "copyright intensive" companies whining to the press and politicians about how the "biggest threat" they face is continued copyright infringement. We hear about how it's undermining not just their business, but entire economic sectors, the basis of capitalism and the fundamental rule of law. Copyright infringement, we are told, is one of the largest risks to the economy and society that you could possibly imagine. We've long questioned the validity of those claims, especially since history has shown that the industry cries wolf fairly frequently and has always been wrong. Most famously, of course, the MPAA's Jack Valenti told Congress that "the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." That was in 1982. In 1986, the home video market -- which the VCR created -- made more money for the MPAA's studios than the box office did. It's tough to believe the "threat" claims when they're always wrong.

But, the "copyright intensive" industries just keep on making those claims, and there's always some in the press and among elected officials who either don't know or don't care about the past (or technology or reality) and automatically believe those claims. They just assume that of course copyright infringement must be a huge threat because these companies say so.

A new study, however, found a pretty good way to evaluate the reality of that threat. Jonathan Band and Jonathan Gerafi realized that a good "independent" third party to evaluate the risk and threat of copyright infringement would be investment analysts. Their only stake in the game is whether or not the company is going to do well or poorly. If the perceived risk and threat was real, they'd certainly be letting everyone know. So, Band and Gerafi have produced a new research report studying equity research reports issued over the last quarter for eight of the top companies in the so-called "copyright intensive industries."

The choice of companies is interesting, because all eight are among those that regularly scream the loudest about the "threats" of infringement: Sony (owner of Sony Music and Sony Pictures), Vivendi (owner of Universal Music), Disney, Viacom (who also owns Paramount), Microsoft, Adobe, Pearson and Reed Elsevier. If you're keeping track, that's basically three of the largest movie studios, two of the largest music labels, two of the largest software companies and two of the largest publishers. If copyright infringement was really this existential threat they've all been screaming about, certainly it would show up in the equity analysts' reports, right?

Well, let's take a look at the findings:

None of the 14 reports for Reed Elsevier and 18 reports for Pearson identified copyright infringement as a risk factor.

Only 13% of the 15 reports for Sony and 22% of the 23 reports for Vivendi mentioned copyright infringement as a potential risk.

Just 8% of the 26 reports for Viacom and 27% of the 26 reports for Disney referred to copyright infringement as a risk factor.

26% of the 19 reports concerning Adobe and 41% of the 27 reports concerning Microsoft identified copyright infringement as a risk factor.

Cumulatively, only 19% (32) of the 168 reports referred to copyright infringement as a possible risk; 81% did not.

And, in case you were wondering, the reports that didn't list copyright infringement as a risk (i.e., nearly all of them) did list out a variety of other factors. It wasn't just a case where they weren't covering risks at all. They carefully looked at the market, and didn't seem to think infringement was a real risk at all.

And, it's important to note that since these are all public companies, the execs at those companies often spend a lot of time "educating" the analysts about the state of their business. In fact, in the annual reports for six of the eight companies listed, the companies themselves do list infringement as a major risk. It just looks like the analysts looked at the detail and simply didn't see any legitimate threat in most of the cases.

from the does-anyone-believe-this-crap? dept

Honestly, it's somewhat difficult to believe that someone who works in the USTR didn't recognize that it was a bad idea to have their new boss, Michael Froman, who was once called one of the most "egregious examples" of the "revolving door" between companies and government, head out to visit two of the largest Hollywood studios just days after the IP chapter of the secretive TPP agreement was leaked, showing that it was basically Hollywood's wishlist of copyright crap. It's even more difficult to believe, given all that and given that Froman decided to go hang out with some friendly folks in Hollywood anyway, that someone at the USTR didn't think maybe, just maybe, Froman should avoid giving an interview in which he'd be asked about the leaked chapter.

But, it happened. Of course, the interview was with Variety, so maybe they figured that only Hollywood people would read it, and that the rest of the world would never catch on to the fact that Froman is either totally clueless or a blatant liar about the TPP. However, he did give an interview, while "touring Paramount's backlot" in which he said a bunch of nutty things. Here's my favorite:

He also called the talks over the trade pact “the most transparent trade negotiation in history,” noting that they have held more than 1,000 briefings on Capitol Hill, have enlisted 600 advisers for input from various groups and have invited stakeholders to address negotiators from all 12 countries, among other efforts.

Let's just say, this is pure bullshit. Extreme bullshit. Honestly, even Variety (which, as you might imagine, tends to toe the Hollywood line) seems to suggest that this claim isn't actually true. And, of course, considering that the USTR is infamously secretive, being "the most transparent in history" doesn't mean you were actually transparent at all. And, in this case, the fact that he's claiming it's "the most transparent in history" days after a chapter that no one in the public has seen during nearly four years of negotiations had to be leaked should highlight the level of bullshit that Froman is spewing.

He seems to have pulled this "most transparent" bullshit from his predecessor, Ron Kirk, who used to claim the same thing. Both are fundamentally trying to mislead. We've said it before, and we'll say it again, listening to lots of people, while not revealing what you're doing, is not transparency. It's listening. Listening may be better than not listening, but it's completely different than "transparency." Let me make this even clearer:

Listening: People ---- information -----> USTR

Transparency: USTR --- information ----> The Public

What Froman described above is about listening. They get "advice" from various stakeholders. That's not transparency. That's listening. So long as no one gets to see what crap they're negotiating "on our behalf," there's no transparency. At all. The only time this negotiation had any transparency was when Wikileaks finally released the IP chapter which the USTR should have and could have done years ago.

The other bit of bullshit in the interview was his misleading response to the claim by some that TPP is like SOPA. Now, I should be clear that we've avoided making that comparison, because there is a different set of issues here. And Froman used those differences to try to discredit all criticism of TPP:

“For example, as I understand it, I wasn’t around for it, (the Stop Online Piracy Act) was about blocking rogue Internet sites from accessing the Internet from the United States. There is nothing in the Trans Pacific Partnership, zero, that has anything to do with that,” he said.

But "blocking rogue websites" isn't what's making people make the comparison between TPP and SOPA. It's two things: (1) a backroom deal negotiated in secret with no input from the public which (2) includes basically a wishlist from Hollywood. The fact that the two wishlists are not identical is not really the point, but it's the point Froman chose to focus on, because he's trying to mislead the public.

Froman continues to demonstrate that he has no business in the role he's in:

“Our goal through these trade negotiations is to make sure we are raising the standard of protection around the world, for artists and the people who support them,” he said.

Except that's not supposed to be the goal at all, and the fact that he thinks it is makes him clearly unqualified for his job. Remember that the TPP is supposed to be about free trade, yet here he is admitting that his actual agenda is increasing protectionism. Second, as anyone who knows anything about intellectual property knows, "raising the standard of protection" has been shown repeatedly to be rather harmful to creators and the public. And, again, the entire purpose of copyright law is supposed to be about promoting progress for the public. It would appear that Froman doesn't know this. And yet he's in charge of negotiating this thing? Really?

This is the reason why transparency matters. Because when you take someone who doesn't understand intellectual property at all, such as Froman, and tell him to negotiate a trade agreement in which the only people he shares the negotiating text with are maximalists, all he hears is how they have to "raise" standards, even as most of the world has realized that the "standards" are already way too high and tremendously damaging to the economy and innovation.

Either way, this whole situation is incredible. You have the USTR, just days after the secret treaty that was written with the help of Hollywood's lobbyists is leaked out, declaring that it's the most transparent in history despite the fact that, if he had his way, none of the public would have seen it, and saying so while touring Hollywood studios. The USTR is either extremely confident that no one cares about trade agreements, or a large segment of the staff there is profoundly clueless. Or maybe it's both.

SOPA was taken down because it was a backroom deal and a Hollywood wishlist, without respect for the public. ACTA went down for the same reason. If Froman doesn't want the same thing to happen to TPP, he might want to learn a thing or two about intellectual property and what transparency means. Because as of right now, he appears to be setting himself up to be roadkill for another internet uprising.

from the how-can-they-deny-it? dept

Back in April, we pointed out that the MPAA was working overtime to screw over the blind in the negotiations for a WIPO treaty to make it easier for the blind and those with vision impairment to access works for the blind. They'd already succeeded in screwing over the deaf by getting them excluded from the treaty, despite it initially being for both. Over the past two months, however, the MPAA tried to go on a charm offensive going on and on about how much they really, really liked blind people and wanted to help get a treaty passed, even somehow getting the National Federation for the Blind to throw their own members under the bus by issuing a joint statement claiming to support the treaty.

However, over the past week, the reports coming out of the treaty negotiations in Marrakesh have been consistent about one thing: the MPAA's influence over the US negotiators has been immense, and the US negotiators have been the single source blocking the completion of the treaty by arguing to gut the entire treaty, making it next to useless. They've fought against fair use. They've fought against exceptions to copyright. It's gotten so bad that even the mainstream press has picked up on the MPAA's direct assault on the blind. The Washington Post has an article all about the MPAA's attempts to block and change the treaty such that it is effectively useless.

But the treaty, years in the making, could be in jeopardy because of unresolved differences between advocates for the blind and the Motion Picture Association of America, which says the accord could undermine protections important for filmmakers, publishers and other major industries.

Of course, you might wonder why the MPAA is so concerned about a treaty for the blind, which is mostly focused on written materials, since that shouldn't impact the MPAA very much. The answer is what we've said for years: copyright maximalists will fight against any treaty that recognizes the rights of people to push back against maximalism through things like fair use. And the MPAA isn't even coy about this:

“What happens here could affect other future treaties,” said Chris Marcich, who is in charge of dealing with the negotiations for the MPAA and its international wing, the Motion Picture Association.

Yes, how dare the public have their rights supported during treaty negotiations about what they can do with works they own. Horrors.

The article also highlights that the MPAA was instrumental in getting the negotiators to drop more expansive fair use rights of the public included, insisting instead on only allowing the "three step test" from the Berne Convention included. As we've discussed in the past the three step test is merely one way in which a country can protect the public's rights to limitations and exceptions in copyright law, but maximalists like to claim it's the only way, because if you read it in the strictest sense, it severely limits fair use, because a use fails the "three step test" if it "unreasonably prejudices the legitimate interests of the rights holder." In other words, if the rights holder doesn't like it, no fair use for you. Amazingly, even this test is now not enough for the MPAA:

But the MPAA says the protections afforded by the three-step test are still too weak and wants them to be more effective. Moreover, Hollywood is strongly resisting language in the draft that mirrors the concept of “fair use,” long embodied in U.S. copyright law. Fair use says that copyright material can be used without permission in certain circumstances, such as for nonprofit educational purposes.

Related to all of this, KEI has received, via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, all emails between MPAA lobbyists and the negotiators from the USPTO (who are handling much of the negotiation). It's worth noting, by the way, that the key person at the USPTO (and the person addressed in many of these emails) is Shire Perlmutter, currently the Chief Policy Officer and Director for International Affairs at the USPTO, but prior to that was the Executive VP of IFPI (the international version of of the RIAA) and before that, was VP and Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property Policy at Time Warner... a member of the MPAA when it owned Warner Bros.

Included in the documents is an incredible attack on fair use by the MPAA, sent in April of this year, just as the MPAA was insisting it wanted to help the blind, and at the same time that the MPAA's Ben Sheffner was, ridiculously, pretending that the MPAA was one of the world's biggest defenders of fair use. Yet, at the very same time, they were promoting a document that claimed the following about fair use:

As has been pointed out by various commentators, open-ended systems such as fair use under Sec. 107 US Copyright Act may raise issues with the three-step test, in particular the first and possibly third step.... Consequently, it is neither necessary nor would it be reasonable or desirable in view of the mentioned difficulties to include an express reference to fair use or fair dealing in the proposed instrument.

A specific reference to fair use or fair dealing could also be misleading for it could be understood as an invitation to implement the instrument in such a way, whether or not it sits well with the particular legal system of the Contracting Party in question. However, any wholesale introduction of a particular legal feature, be it fair use, fair dealing or a closed list, would be contrary to the intended effect of the discretion that Contracting Parties may exercise with regard to the way of implementing their treaty obligations....

At a time when the fair use doctrine is considered by many as a cure for all ills, this would clearly be the wrong sign....

Consequently, for all the foregoing reasons, the reference to specific ways of implementation such as fair use or fair dealing should be omitted from the proposed instrument.

These are the defenders of fair use? These are the folks who claim they're trying to help the blind? That's all a lie. And the quotes above are just a few. There are a lot more of that nature. The MPAA wants to screw over the blind out of a fear that people might realize that fair use and other rights of the public might just be more important than an artificial government monopoly system to inflate their bottom lines.

Later in the documents, you can see the cozy relationship between the key government players, Perlmutter and Justin Hughes (another well-known maximalist supporter, now in the government) and MPAA members and lobbyists. There's also a discussion about how three steps in Berne only applies to certain types of copyright rights (reproduction rights), but does not apply to other things like public performances, and how their wishes are to go even further and make sure the very limiting 3 steps applies to everything. It also shows that the US government, via Perlmutter and Hughes, helped propose back to the MPAA how they might achieve their goals in the agreement. In an email from Scott Martin at Paramount to Perlmutter:

I suggested to Justin the concept that I heard from both you and Karyn Temple Claggett: membership in the VIP Treaty be limited to countries that have ratified and implemented the WCT. Perhaps if there is resistance from non-ratifiers, the US/EU could then proposal a new Article Ebis that would apply only to countries which want to ratify the VIP Treaty but which have not yet ratified and implemented WCT.

Justin seemed intrigued by the idea and mused that perhaps the Japanese proposal for Article E could be expanded to cover this separate goal.

There are also cases where people, such as Time Warner employees, were sending language they wanted inserted directly to Hughes at his request. At one point, Hughes emails Bradley Silver at Time Warner with a simple request:

Could you just send me the whole language?

That was after Silver specifically asked Hughes to "tweak" the language in one section.

Basically, the documents make it abundantly clear that the MPAA is trying to keep fair use/fair dealing way out of the agreement, and then seeking to undermine things even further by putting in place an extreme version of the three step test -- a test that already goes way too far in limiting the public's rights to make use of works. It further shows that the MPAA's public stance that it's in support of a treaty for the blind is hogwash. It's in support of a treaty that strips away many of the rights for the blind.

from the indeed dept

We just wrote about how major Hollywood studios had included links to the freely available, Creative Commons-licensed documentary, TPB AFK, in a bunch of bogus DMCA notices to Google, meaning that perfectly legitimate links were likely being removed. The director of that film, Simon Klose, has now responded with an open letter in the form of a video, where he notes that this is a clear violation of his free speech.

He points out that there are basically two possibilities. First, that these studios are purposely trying to censor a film about The Pirate Bay, which highlights the civil liberties questions raised by the studios legal pursuit of the founders of the site, and second, that their technology for finding infringing content absolutely sucks. He points out that neither of these situations is a good one. The first one sounds crazy, but, as he notes, not quite as crazy as some of the things that were revealed in the film, such as Warner Bros. hiring the lead investigator in the case while the investigation was still ongoing. But even if it was an accident, that doesn't change the fact that his legitimate content was being blocked from Google, and he considers it a free speech issue.

from the another-accident-i-suppose dept

We see so many bogus DMCA takedowns, and we hear the big copyright holders insisting that it's just an accident each and every time -- and not to worry about the collateral damage and censorship it leads to. So it seems interesting that TorrentFreak has uncovered a series of bogus DMCA takedown notices to Google from four different giant Hollywood players -- Viacom, Paramount (owned by Viacom), Fox and Lionsgate -- that each ask it to remove links to Simon Klose's excellent documentary about The Pirate Bay TPB AFK. As TorrentFreak notes, Fox, via DtecNet (another total failure for the "six strikes" company), asked Google to remove a link to the movie on Mechodownload. Viacom asked for links to be removed to the movie on Mrworldpremiere and Rapidmovies. Lionsgate asked for to remove a link to the movie from The Pirate Bay of all places. Needless to say, all of these were authorized copies that the movie studios were seeking to have hidden.

Beyond the obvious concern about censoring a movie that shows, perhaps, a more sympathetic side of the TPB crew and their legal situation, these kinds of take downs serve another, more nefarious purpose: making sure there is less value for authorized works on these various sites. You hear it all the time from these companies that these sites are "all bad" and must be taken down. Having authorized content really looks bad, so it's nice for them that they can remove it by filing bogus DMCA claims with no real recourse. No wonder the MPAA is so vehement that it shouldn't need to consider fair use before sending bogus takedowns.

Yes, I'm sure these were all just more "accidents" but the impact is very real. For struggling filmmakers like Klose, having authorized copies of his film removed from Google has a serious impact. Copyright maximalists never seem concerned in the slightest about the collateral damage on the people who have actually learned to use these platforms well. They prefer to protect those who fight against new systems of distribution, while harming those who have succeeded in using them.

from the those-accountants-are-really-expensive dept

Ah, Hollywood copyright math. In the past, we've discussed a few instances of how massively profitable films use funny accounting tricks in order to avoid ever having to show an official profit, even as the studios themselves make out nicely. The key trick: the studios set up special subsidiaries just for each film, and then charge those subsidiaries huge sums of money for effectively doing very little. Thus, the studio gets all the money, but the actual "film" is shown as remaining in the red.

The latest example of this in action involves a group of investors who gave $375 million to Paramount Pictures expecting to see some return on blockbusters like Mission: Impossible III, Blades of Glory and the Transformers series. All in all, those $375 million dollars found their way into 29 movies, many of which were massively successful. In total, the collection of films brought in $7 billion dollars worldwide. And... Paramount didn't pay a single dime out to those investors, until they were finally taken to court.

The financiers charged Paramount with understating gross receipts, delaying payments, overstating production and distribution costs and hindering audit rights to verify revenue and costs with the films that Melrose II had funded. The plaintiff also had a bone to pick with how revenue from Melrose II-funded films was being received through Paramount parent Viacom, not Paramount, and how money was flowing. For instance, Paramount allegedly paid sister company MTV as a third-party participant for Nacho Libre and Charlotte's Web.

In reaction to the claims, Paramount initially described the lawsuit as "filled with hyperbole" and claimed that it "ignores the true facts."

Later, Paramount characterized the investors as being impatient. "Based on the performance of the films in which it invested, Melrose II is expected to make a double-digit return on its investment," the studio alleged.

Perhaps hoping to keep the mysteries of Hollywood accounting secret, Paramount has now worked out a "settlement" with the investors, just as hearings were about to begin. It seems likely that Paramount coughed up some money to keep the investors happy... and to keep from having to provide to the court information on how the money flowed, where all of us would have seen some more details of the infamous Hollywood accounting practices.

from the well-look-at-that... dept

The folks over at TorrentFreak teamed up with BitTorrent monitoring firm Scaneye to look and see if files being shared via BitTorrent happened to be coming from some IP addresses held by the big Hollywood studios... and they found what appears to be tons of Hollywood flicks shared from Hollywood studio IP addresses. Of course, plenty of caveats apply: it's possible that these are super ham-fisted honeypots for copyright trolling, in which they're recording the IP addresses of downloaders. It's possible that the system is wrong. It's possible that the IP address information is wrong. But... it's also possible that some employees at these studios are (whether on purpose or not) using BitTorrent and sharing films -- sometimes films from other studios. For example, they found a Paramount Pictures IP address sharing Happy Feet, which is a Warner Bros. film.

In the end, there could be any number of reasons they were able to find these results, but given that when the shoe is on the other foot, the studios and other copyright holders seem to insist that a single IP address is proof positive of liability, doesn't it seem reasonable to question the studios about this bit of evidence as well?

from the maybe-their-lawyers-were-drunk? dept

As product placement in television and film becomes more prevalent, it was only a matter of time before intellectual property silliness had to follow. For example, we've seen such wonderful cases of egocentrism as a copyright claim over a painting shown in a movie. Couple that with product placement examples that are awkward for all involved and you've got a recipe for litigious fun not seen since a murder trial involving a former Buffalo Bills running back.

Reader Chris writes in about a story that appears to be a nice crossroads of these two aspects of product placement, in which several alcohol companies are apparently upset that their products are being shown in the movie Flight doing what those products do: get people drunk.

Anheuser-Busch said Monday that it has asked Paramount Pictures Corp. to obscure or remove the Budweiser logo from the film, which at one point shows Washington's character drinking the beer while behind the wheel.

Budweiser is hardly the only alcoholic beverage shown in "Flight," which earned $25 million in its debut weekend and is likely to remain popular with audiences. Washington's character frequently drinks vodka throughout the film, with several different brands represented. William Grant & Sons, which distributes Stolichnaya in the United States, also said it didn't license its brand for inclusion in the film and wouldn't have given permission if asked.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "Why didn't the film get permission to use the products in their film?" The answer is about as complicated as a straight line; they don't have to. Studios are not required to ask for permission to include every little brand in their movies -- even if some companies now think that's the case. True, Denzel Washington's character in the film is a drunk and Budweiser may not be pleased to be associated with that aspect of the story, but the law isn't concerned about Budweiser's pleasure. Trademark law isn't about making sure you're always happy about how your product is displayed.

Even going beyond trademark law, it's not like they were "misrepresenting" anything. I, for one, can assure you that the depiction of beer being able to get a person hammered is spot on accurate, and if you won't take my word for it, I'll give you the phone numbers of some of my neighbors who can relate their experiences living near me on NFL Sundays. The point is that there's a reason these companies didn't give their permission: nobody asked them for it.

Trademark laws "don't exist to give companies the right to control and censor movies and TV shows that might happen to include real-world items," said Daniel Nazer, a resident fellow at Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project. "It is the case that often filmmakers get paid by companies to include their products. I think that's sort of led to a culture where they expect they'll have control. That's not a right the trademark law gives them."

Jay Dougherty, a professor at Loyola Law School, said the use of brands in films has generally been protected by the courts, even when the companies aren't pleased with the portrayals."It wouldn't have been as effective a film if they used a bunch of non-generic brands," said Dougherty, who is also the director of the school's Entertainment & Media Law Institute. "In a normal situation, if the alcohol were just there as a smaller part of the movie, they might have created an artificial brand for it."

Unfortunately, with the wonderful garden of permission culture that IP laws have fertilized so well for us, companies think they can control...and control...and control. But just because sometimes filmmakers seek out product placement, that doesn't mean that all brand appearances need to first receive approval. Thankfully, thus far, the courts have recognized that they cannot keep their products out of film this way. Now let's all go have a non-generic beer.

from the ownership-culture dept

Rob Hyndman points us to the bizarre story of director William Friedkin, perhaps most well known for directing both The French Connection and The Exorcist in the early 1970s. However, right now he's in a bit of a legal dispute with both Paramount and Universal studios, who co-produced the film that came after both of those films, called Sorcerer. While not a box office success, apparently there's a fair bit of interest in the film these days, and there have been requests for Friedkin to screen it, and for him to appear and talk about it. However, Paramount and Universal both seem confused about who holds what rights -- and while both seem to claim some rights to the film, neither seems to know what those are (and at least Paramount claims it no longer can find a print of the film, though Friedkin says he has his own). Friedkin finally decided to sue to force the companies to clarify who holds what rights. There's also the separate issue that, despite a profit participation deal with the film, neither studio has actually provided him with an accounting statement in 20 years. From the filing, which is embedded below:

Friedkin is the director and producer of the 1977 motion picture Sorcerer.... Friedkin is also a profit participant in the Picture, and owns a print. Although Defendants Paramount... and Universal... have previously had certain rights to exploit the Picture in the United States, each has recently disclaimed rights to exploit the Picture in the United States, and admitted ignorance as to who, if anyone, currently has such rights. Bafflingly, however, defendants persist in denying that Friedkin has any rights to exploit the Picture. Friedkin has filed this action to obtain a declaration as to the parties' respective rights in the Picture.

It does seem fairly crazy that such an issue should end up in court, and it appears the court thinks so too. While the original was filed in California State Court, recently it was removed to federal court by the defendants, and the court immediately directed them to its alternative dispute resolution (ADR) program in the hopes that this gets settled outside of litigation. Either way, it seems like a pretty crazy situation where the studios deny the filmmaker the right to show the film, while at the same time refusing to explain what rights they do have in the film.